Musk: We will attempt to catch Starship like Superheavy, “hopefully early next year”
According to a tweet by Elon Musk on October 15, 2024, SpaceX is targeting early 2025 for the first attempt to recover Starship after launch, and to do it the same way it recovered Superheavy, by catching it with a set of launch tower chopsticks.
To do this will require getting that second launch tower at Boca Chica operational. It will also require SpaceX to successfully restart Starship’s Raptor engines in space, something it has not yet done. Once this is demonstrated to work, the company would also have to do another orbital test where Starship is put in a full orbit and then de-orbited precisely to a point over the ocean, demonstrating that such a return can next be done reliably over land.
In other words, a tower catch can only happen after at least two more test flights. Thus, to do it early next year means SpaceX will have to establish a test launch pace of a launch every one or two months. This is actually something Musk has said repeatedly he wants to do, but has been stymied repeatedly by FAA red tape from doing it.
I suspect Musk’s tweet is expressing his unstated hope that a Trump victory in November will force the FAA to ease its bureaucratic interference.
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According to a tweet by Elon Musk on October 15, 2024, SpaceX is targeting early 2025 for the first attempt to recover Starship after launch, and to do it the same way it recovered Superheavy, by catching it with a set of launch tower chopsticks.
To do this will require getting that second launch tower at Boca Chica operational. It will also require SpaceX to successfully restart Starship’s Raptor engines in space, something it has not yet done. Once this is demonstrated to work, the company would also have to do another orbital test where Starship is put in a full orbit and then de-orbited precisely to a point over the ocean, demonstrating that such a return can next be done reliably over land.
In other words, a tower catch can only happen after at least two more test flights. Thus, to do it early next year means SpaceX will have to establish a test launch pace of a launch every one or two months. This is actually something Musk has said repeatedly he wants to do, but has been stymied repeatedly by FAA red tape from doing it.
I suspect Musk’s tweet is expressing his unstated hope that a Trump victory in November will force the FAA to ease its bureaucratic interference.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Tanker turnaround time would benefit from tower landings, but HLS still needs landing legs, and probably ones with a wide stance!
What does “HLS” stand for?
David M. Cook: HLS is NASA’s acronym for “Human Landing System,” which in plain English (which I always try to use) is simply a manned lunar lander.
It’s also worth mentioning that NASA has awarded the first contract for HLS to SpaceX, based on the use of its Starship. While Starship is far from an HLS vehicle at present, it at least actually exists and is in early development. The other candidates that were proposed exist only in PowerPoint, and perhaps in plywood!
Mr Cook I believe HLS also needs several super Draco thrusters mounted high on the Starship as there are worries the raptor engines would throw up way to much dust making landing very tricky. However, it is just a variant on the Starship theme. The Mars bound ones will also probably need several modifications. SpaceX seems quite adroit at these kind of changes unlike any of their competitors.
Mr. Zimmerman I believe autocorrect may have mangled this line for you
something it has not yet down
probably you meant
something it has not yet done
Tregonsee34: Autocorrect has nothing to do with it. 70+ year old eyes and brain are the explanation. I have fixed the error. Thank you.
Ray Van Dune noted regarding a landing legs on a HLS :” . . . probably ones with a wide stance!”
Larry Craig-like, perhaps?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal
Naughty naughty!
I want Lunar Starship to be cargo-only at first.
Tregonsee314,
The HLS will have a ring of “high-pockets” landing thrusters but they won’t be Super Dracos. Super Dracos burn hypergolics. The HLS thrusters will burn methalox, just like the Raptors do.
HLS is eventually intended to be reused, open-endedly, as a lunar-orbit-to-lunar-surface and lunar-surface-to-lunar-orbit shuttlecraft. The SpaceX cis-lunar infrastructure will eventually include propellant depots in lunar orbit as well as in LEO. But those depots will be carrying methalox, not hypergolics. Oxygen will eventually be generated in massive quantities on the lunar surface as a by-product of metal smelting done there. Producing hypergolics on the Moon would be much harder as their constituent elements are in much shorter supply there.
There is considerable circumstantial evidence that SpaceX are already well along in developing the HLS landing thrusters. Nasaspaceflight.com has staffers tracking the goings-on at SpaceX’s McGregor, TX test facility 24/7. They know – very well – what Merlins, Raptors and even Super Dracos sound like when run on the test stands there. For some time these folks have heard occasional test firings of some sort of engine that is none of the above.
SpaceX has kept most other aspects of the HLS Starship variant’s development out of sight. I suspect the first sight of such a beast will probably be through the windows of the Starbase Starfactory when a “funny-looking” TPS-tile-free nosecone appears. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that sighting takes place well before the end of next year.